Michael Goodwin: Trump recklessly accepting a plane from Qatar is the type of unnecessary risk that could ruin his presidency

Over the years, numerous studies, speeches and books have focused on a phenomenon known as self-sabotage.

The subjects are highly successful people who throw it all away by behaving recklessly when they get to the top of the heap.

Think Bill Clinton with Monica Lewinsky.

Overconfidence, boredom and a notorious quest for power are among the reasons commonly identified as explanations for the destructive cycle.

Now comes Donald Trump, who is behaving in ways that risk his name being added to the list of the notoriously foolhardy.

In his case, the mystery would be why Trump appears willing to ruin a perfectly good presidency by engaging in financial dealings that are suspect and unnecessary.

His success, his legacy, the MAGA movement and America’s place in the world all hang in the balance.

Comeback victory

The backdrop is unique: Trump’s comeback victory for a second term after surviving a would-be assassin’s bullet and four politically driven prosecutions is already the stuff of legend.

Despite a few hiccups, he has pulled off one of the best starts to a second term by fulfilling big campaign promises.

His success in closing the border within weeks stands by itself as one of the greatest and fastest achievements in modern American history.

Similarly, his knack for getting big business leaders to invest trillions of dollars in the US is a down payment on his pledge to add millions of good-paying jobs while cementing America’s economy as the unchallenged world leader.

Trump is also taking on the far left over its cultural dominance with hot-button issues, including the size and cost of government and the roles of race, religion and the transgender movement in business, schools and sports.

His defunding of NPR and PBS is a bold stroke that no other president would dare take.

On the global stage, he’s fashioning a record as a committed peacemaker, one that might finally win him the Nobel Peace Prize he should have won for the historic Abraham Accords.

Add to this impressive list the fact that he’s already a self-made billionaire, and the question becomes even more maddening: Why is Trump risking everything he’s worked so hard for just to have a few more shiny baubles and trinkets?

Exhibit A is his eagerness for America to accept a $400 million jet from the kingdom of Qatar for use as Air Force One while in office.

After that, the jumbo “palace in the sky” would become the property of his presidential library, where it presumably would be reserved for his use.

If that were all, the gift would be questionable but defensible, given the long delays in Boeing fulfilling its contract to build a new presidential plane when the current fleet is about 40 years old.

Trump’s reasoning is blunt: “I would never be one to turn down that kind of an offer,” he told reporters.

“I mean, I could be a stupid person and say, ‘No, we don’t want a free, very expensive airplane.’ But it was, I thought it was a great gesture.”

Unfortunately, the Qatari jet is only one of a handful of decisions that suggest the seal of the presidency has dollar signs on it.

Trump and his family have businesses — golf courses, hotels and/or towers — in each of the three Arab countries he’s visiting this week, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.

These are not free-market economies.

They are monarchies, where the ruling families wield absolute power to grant favors and licenses.

Bankroll Hamas

Of the three nations, Qatar is the most troubling, given that it is ruled by the same family that funds Al Jazeera, helped to bankroll Hamas and gave its billionaire killers shelter, all while refusing to denounce the terrorists’ Oct. 7 butchery in Israel.

Moreover, some of the millions Qatar has funneled to elite American universities have been tied to antisemitic, anti-American faculty and the radical groups calling for the elimination of Israel.

The failure of those colleges to protect Jewish students is the prime reason why Trump’s administration is rightly canceling billions in federal grants and contracts with Columbia, Harvard, Penn and others.

But if Qatar’s money is good enough for Trump and his family, how is it too dirty for universities?

In the clearest sign yet that the president’s hunger for public and private deals is insatiable, the new leader of Syria, a former member of al Qaeda, reportedly sought a meeting with the commander-in-chief by mentioning to a Trump associate that he could envision a “Trump Tower in Damascus,” in addition to American investments in Syrian oil and gas.

Again, the image is one of the first family and America both profiting.

Trump was more careful in his first term, and ruled out any new foreign family deals.

Now there is the added worrisome fact that his family has dived head-first into the cryptocurrency business, even as federal regulators report to the president.

His entanglements are fueling questions about the Constitution’s emoluments clause, which prohibits federal officials from accepting valuable gifts and payments from foreign governments without congressional approval.

The point is to make sure the president and others remain free of outside influence.

Catnip to Dems

Naturally, these big-money deals are catnip to Democrats and their media handmaidens.

The left has been desperately searching both for a leader and issues it can use against Trump now and in the 2026 midterms.

The Dems’ tilt toward socialism and a crazy embrace of illegal criminal migrants is proving to be a bust with the public.

Ditto for its jihad against Elon Musk and the DOGE effort to cut federal spending.

And with the stock market recovering its losses from the plunge after Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs and with inflation falling, the economy doesn’t look now as if it’s going to be a hammer Dems can use against him next year.

All of which makes it more likely the family’s foreign business deals and the Qatari plane could be their rallying points.

They don’t have to be wildly successful to have an outsized impact.

The razor-thin GOP majority in the House, and the recent record of control slipping away from the president’s party at the first midterm, means even a slight shift in public mood could hand the gavel to Rep. Hakeem Jeffries.

Trump’s domestic agenda would be instantly dead, and House impeachment would follow.

That pattern would be a replay of his first term, when the last two years of Trump’s presidency were dominated by Nancy Pelosi’s determination to drive him from office or at least dirty him up so he couldn’t be re-elected.

The manufactured hysteria over Ukraine and Russia, Russia, Russia was enough to make her speaker.

There’s no requirement that history repeat itself, of course, but the circumstances are eerily ?similar.

The outcome is still within Trump’s control, and it would be tragic if he gives the Dems an opening to derail his presidency.